Fusion Waste & Decommissioning
Fusion avoids fission-style spent fuel. Hyperion’s qualified low-activation structure remains at or below Class C for disposal, while a low-neutron burner produces less activation.
- No spent fuel
- No fission-style spent fuel; activated structure is managed as Class C LLW
- Main waste
- Neutron-activated structural materials
- Timescale
- Class C disposable low-level waste; impurity control keeps it at or below Class C
- Kronos
- Low-neutron → less activation, easier decommissioning
Fusion's waste profile is fundamentally different from fission's: there is no fission-style spent fuel. The primary radioactive waste is the reactor's own structure, made radioactive by neutron activation. For the Hyperion breeder, Activated structures classify at or below 10 CFR 61 Class C low-level waste — disposable, with no greater-than-Class-C material and no deep-geologic repository — when built to the qualified copper-, tantalum-, rhenium-, and molybdenum-free Cr-Ti-V-W alloy and its impurity specification (niobium <= 5 ppm, controlled nitrogen). A small long-lived fraction remains — Nb-94 from residual niobium and C-14 from nitrogen — an order of magnitude below the Class-C boundary. This is disposable low-level waste, not free-release.
Because Kronos MetroVolt is low-neutron, it activates far less material than a D–T plant and produces correspondingly less waste — and with no breeding blanket to dispose of. Decommissioning is easier for the same reason: less activated mass, shorter-lived, handled by the same remote-maintenance systems used in operation. It is a genuinely cleaner end-of-life story than any thermal baseload it would replace.
Activated structures classify at or below Class C low-level waste — disposable, with no greater-than-Class-C material and no deep-geologic repository — when built to the qualified low-activation copper-, tantalum-, rhenium-, and molybdenum-free Cr-Ti-V-W alloy and its impurity specification (niobium <= 5 ppm, controlled nitrogen). A small long-lived fraction remains, well below the Class-C boundary. This is disposable low-level waste, not free-release.
This reflects our latest activation analysis (2026).